


The Promise

by Thaliona



Category: Star Wars, Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Childhood Friends, Clan Wren, Darksaber, Din's Childhood, Gen, House Kryze, Mandalorian Resistance, New Mandalorians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22012099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thaliona/pseuds/Thaliona
Summary: The Mandalorian reflects on his promise to protect the Child as Moff Gideon closes in on them before an ally from his past makes an impossible appearance.--------Episode 8 spoilers//canon until the end.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV) & Original Character(s), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Character
Comments: 14
Kudos: 77





	The Promise

**Author's Note:**

> Well this ended up being way longer than anticipated. Just playing with Din's past, what became of the Mandalorians after the Great Purge, and, you know, how the heck Moff Gideon got the Darksaber. Mando'a from mandoa.org.

Moff Gideon.

Old wounds that Din had thought long healed tore open as the crowd of Stormtroopers parted to let the Imperial monster pass through them. Din had been there at the Battle of Concordia – the last stand of Manda’lor Bo-Katan and her Mandalorians during the Great Purge. He did not need to recall the songs of the Night of a Thousand Tears. E-Webs had been used during the Battle of Concordia. He had seen the destruction such a weapon could do first hand. 

Gideon would not know that he had been at the Battle of Concordia. By then, he had been made a Protector, and the Registers of Mandalore did not reveal the identify of Protectors.

If Din had been the man he was at the Battle of Concordia, he would have rushed Gideon in a heedless attempt to kill the man that orchestrated the Purge. It would be a warrior’s death, one last act of revenge. But he was not that man. Not anymore. The long years that followed had tempered the wrathful grief that would have previously blinded him.

And now he had the Child. 

Din had failed at the Battle of Concordia, failed in his duties as a Protector. He had failed her. He would not fail the Child. No, Moff Gideon would not take anyone else from him. If it meant his death, so be it.

Time slowed as facing the reality of their situation became unavoidable. 

In another desperate attempt, he tried to reach Kuiil on the comlink. The IG-11 answered…but in the background, just above the hum of the speeder, Din heard the unmistakable giggling of the Child. There was still hope. Hope that he might be reunited with his foundling. Hope that they might just get out of this alive after all. 

That hope surged as IG-11 burst through the unassuming platoon of Stormtroopers, but the droid’s effort wasn’t enough. It was badly outnumbered. Fear tied the Mandalorian’s stomach into knots as he realized the stupid droid had brought the Child with it into the battle. 

“Cover me.” 

If he didn’t act now, the droid would get the Child killed. The Mandalorian was vaguely aware of Greef following him into battle. The show of courage was unexpected, but nothing over the course of the past several months had gone as expected. Charging into a battlefield in which he and his allies had the odds against them was not out of the norm, but this particular situation was still unexpected. Din had thought his days of large-scale fights with Stormtroopers were long over. To his pleasure, he found that their fighting abilities had not much improved. Their strengths were in their numbers not their skill. 

It was a damn shame that there were so many Stormtroopers.

For a brief glimmering moment, Din had the upper hand as the E-Web wreaked havoc on those that would have used it to against him. A blast to the back of the head disrupted that glimmering moment. It was no surprise to Din that the coward’s shot came from Moff Gideon.

To hesitate is to die. Din knew this. The mantra had been drilled into him ever sine he was a Foundling with the Fighting Corp. Yet as he faced Moff Gideon, the monster that took everything from him, Din Djarin hesitated. Not from fear, no, Din did not fear Moff Gideon. Din hesitated out of sheer surreal disbelief that, after all this time, he would be the one to bring down this monster. He would finally avenge his People. He would finally avenge her. 

And then the world went black. 

_“Stay with me.”_

The same words echoed from a different battlefield, a different woman. 

Din had nearly died on that battlefield. He hadn’t failed her that time, not like he would at Concordia. The wound that had torn through his armor and gutted him like a fish had been meant for her, but he’d taken it gladly. She’d cradled his helmeted head in her lap and begged him to stay as the medics tried to save his life on that muddy hellscape of a field that became the grave of too many of his brothers and sisters in arm. By some miracle, it had not become his.

Only a year later, their roles would be reversed. Only a year later, he would fail her.

Briefly, the world came back into focus. Cara was the woman begging him to stay. He was not on a muddy battlefield but the wreckage of a cantina. The Child was there. Unharmed. He hadn’t failed. The Child would live. He couldn’t feel his legs. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t failed again. 

His thoughts began to swim again as his vision started to blur. The distinct feeling of blood seeping out of his helmet and the lack of feeling in his legs further assured him of his predicament. He would not survive this fight. 

Din did not want to die. He wanted to take the Child far from here, somewhere safe, but he trusted Cara to get the Child to his people and he trusted his people to care for his foundling. The Mandalorians took care of their own, and they would take care of the Child as they had taken care of him.

Din did not want to die, but this was not a bad death, and he was so, so tired. Sleep never came easy to him – not even as a child. It would be nice to finally rest. After passing into Manda, he might be able to do just that at long last. 

Of course, fate would not be so kind. Death and the rest that would come with it would need to wait. The Child was in danger. If only his head would stop throbbing, if only his legs would move, if only his vision would clear, he could protect the Child from being incinerated. None of those things happened despite his efforts to will them so. His head throbbed. His legs refused. His vision darkened. 

Yet, the Child wasn’t incinerated. None of them were – only the flametrooper suffered the fate he would have inflicted upon them.

Din retained enough of his senses to marvel once again at the Child. There were times he wondered who was protecting who. His time as the Child’s protector was over. He felt it. He was at peace with it…but when he shifted his gaze to the blur that was the Child his eyes watered from a pain he had never felt before. Worse than any physical pain, this new pain made Din almost wish for death to take him swifter than it was but, to his surprise, he was not yet ready to let go.

One more look as Cara bundled the Child and fled with Greef to the sewers. His fingers twitched in protest, but he kept himself from reaching out. It would do no good.

If only the droid would end it. 

Strangely, the surprises had not ended. IG wanted to play nurse. Death would be better than having his helmet removed. To have his helmet removed in front of a living being would be a form of death but one that would keep him from entering Manda.

“I am not a living thing.”

A loophole. IG-11 wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t a living thing. Din would not be violating the Resol’nare. He might still live. He might still be reunited with his foundling.

 _“Stay with me.”_

The voice from his memory whispered again, begging him to live. He would listen. He’d never denied her anything before. He wouldn’t now, especially not if it meant returning to the Child.

The helmet hissed as the droid removed it, and Din slowly lowered his blaster. Trusting a droid…removing his helmet…what next? This day could not become more askew, but he would live. 

As the Bacta spray did its job, Din began to feel a tingle in his toes. His vision cleared enough that he could see mostly straight, and his headache dulled enough that his thoughts were mostly coherent. Hours would pass before he fully regained feeling in his lower extremities, but Din didn’t have hours. They needed to move now, and they needed to move quickly. 

“Help me up.”

“That is inadvisable. Your injuries are severe. You must remain stationary for the Bacta spray to take full effect.”

“I’ll find a place to be…stationary…once we find the other Mandalorians.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. Once he knew that the Child was safe, he’d rest, but he couldn’t rest now. The room was also on fire. Even the droid would have to concede that there were better places to be stationary than the burnt out cantina. “My helmet. Please” Now that the danger of dying from the head wound had passed, Din wanted it back in place. He felt exposed without it.

Still slightly dizzy, Din struggled to put his helmet back on but refused to let IG-11 help. This was a thing he must do himself. He heaved a sigh of relief once his face was again hidden from the world. 

“Alright. Let’s go.”

Reluctantly, IG-11 helped Din to his unsteady feet. For a few halting steps, Din resisted leaning against the droid out of pride of being a warrior and long held prejudice against droids. Din’s pride and prejudice would undoubtedly slow them down. 

“I must insist you lean against me. It is for the benefit of your health.”

Din remained silent but complied. He was too weak to let his pride or prejudice dictate anything. Maybe it was because of his head injury, but Din wondered if Kuill had been right about the droid.

Din could not remember many happy reunions but reaching Cara and the Child made it to the top of that list. He was even happy to see Greef. If only he knew in a moment they’d be stumbling into a graveyard of his people. Grief brought him to his knees. Anger blinded him against his ally until the Armorer interjected with the truth. 

The Imperials. The Imps. They’d slaughtered more of his people. That some escaped gave him little comfort. Their numbers dwindled even further. He did not, however, regret saving the Child. 

The Imperials could not have him. Not while Din lived.

“By Creed, it is in your care.”

That much, Din already knew. Din had known that from the moment he’d made the decision to return for the Child shortly after handing him over. However, the next comment by the Armorer brought to life the emotion that he had not been able to name. 

“You are as its father.”

Din was not sure he knew what it meant to be a father. His memories of his birth father were vague – clouded by time and trauma. He had been raised in the Fighting Corp among other Foundlings. The Mandalorian that saved him would visit, but wartime made things difficult. The group of Mandalorians that oversaw the Foundling unit of the Fighting Corp cared for them well, but Din could not identify any of them in particular that he considered a father figure. 

Despite his uncertainty, Din knew that this was the Way, and he would be as the Child’s father, even if he was not sure how to do so.

So it was decided. They were a clan of two now, and Din had earned his signet. It did not feel real. Din wondered if it ever would. 

As the signet was forged onto his pauldron, Din thought of the two youths, no longer quite children but not yet adults, who had whispered about the day he would finally earn his aliik on the night before swearing the Creed. She had snuck into the Fighting Corp’s Foundling barracks. It was not the first time, but it would be the last. Soon, Din would be moved to the barracks for Initiates, and sneaking into those barracks was a far greater offense. 

Like the warriors that rescued him, Din had decided to follow the Way in its purest form. In the morning, he would swear the Creed and finally be allowed to put on the helmet of a Mandalorian. After putting it on, he would never take it off in front of another living being. Not even her. Not unless they married, but they were young, and such an idea seemed far too fanciful to even discuss in jest. So, she had snuck into the barracks to see his face one last time. In the still of the night, heads bowed together, they whispered about his aliik…what it would be, how he would earn it, that she wanted to be the one to bestow it upon him.

In what felt like another life, Din had promised to protect her, and he had failed. Staring down at his foundling, Din felt the same promise being made to the Child, his child now, in a place in his heart he’d thought ripped out, but this time he would not fail.

Din had not thought of her this much in over a decade. He didn’t know what she’d think about him receiving a mudhorn sigil or his situation with the Child. He did know, however, that she would be even more excited that he finally got his jetpack than his signet.

With his signet and his foundling, Din felt a renewed purpose for surviving this mess. All they had to do was navigate a lava river and get to the Razor Crest while avoiding the Imps. Simple. 

The sulfur and heat from the river brought back his headache with a vengeance. With it came a new wave of dizziness and nausea that threatened his focus. His knees felt as though they might buckle. A cold sweat mingled with the blood hidden by his helmet. Embracing denial, Din blamed his narrowing vision on the fact that they were in a tunnel. Tunnel vision in a tunnel with a platoon of Imps waiting for them at the end. What a cruel joke. 

IG’s talk of self-destructing snapped him out of his darkening thoughts. 

“There’s nothing to be sad about. I’ve never been alive.” 

Din lied. IG called him out on it. There was nothing left to be said. IG’s manufacturer’s protocol dictated he could not be captured. He wasn’t. It was a warrior’s death. The platoon of Imps didn’t stand chance. IG’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain, but they were not out of danger just yet. The silence that followed IG’s sacrifice was torn apart by the roar of a TIE Fighter engine. 

Moff Gideon.

Their blasters were useless against the TIE. Din knew the first sweep was only meant to induce fear. Gideon was cruel and took pleasure in playing with his prey. There was nothing honorable about his method of killing. The second sweep would bring their death.

“Here he comes!”

The jet pack. He could use the jetpack. Decades had passed since he’d trained with the Rising Phoenix, but desperate times called for desperate measures. Admittedly, Din would have felt more confident in his odds of success if he wasn’t experiencing double vision. The helmet could only correct so much, but he was fairly sure which was the real TIE. One was less fuzzy than the other. 

Here went nothing. 

“What the hell kind of fighter is that?!” Greef called out above the new roar of another starfighter’s engine. 

Whatever it was, Moff Gideon was spooked. The TIE veered off from the line of fire that would have been their end to avoid the starfighter’s near dive bomb. The predator had become the prey. Fortunately for them, the new player in this deadly game didn’t seem to give a womp rat’s ass about them. 

“It looks like a Fang Fighter….” Cara stated in disbelief as the TIE narrowly avoided the Fang’s torpedoes. The other starfighter was unfazed by the TIE’s escape maneuvers, deftly following suit until both starfighters were out of sight. It would seem that they would not be privy to how that dogfight ended. 

“Not possible.” Din murmured, more to himself than to Cara. His People had been scattered to the edges of space after the Great Purge. Fang Fighers were a thing of the past. It couldn’t be. And it wasn’t. It was a Gauntlet fighter. He’d know one anywhere.

“Oh, I think it is possible, Mando,” Cara motioned in the distance to where a sleek warship had dropped into the atmosphere. “That’s the _Katan_. No wonder the Imp ran off.”

A Mandalorian warship.

Din was vaguely aware of Cara easing him down the floor of the ferry as his legs gave out from under him. It was too much. It was all too much. As IG had put it, he needed to be stationary for the Bacta to be effective. With the adrenaline no longer keeping him upright, his body was demanding that stationary time now. 

“I’m fine.” 

Din was not fine. Din was very far from fine. At least, his foundling was safe. The Child had waddled to his side and was staring up at Din with what could only be a look of concern. Sighing softly, Din gently stroked the Child’s ear with a gloved finger. He hadn’t failed the Child. They would live to fight another day.

That day may come sooner than he was ready if the landspeeder racing towards them was foe and not friend, but Din would fight, and he would not break his promise to the Child.


End file.
